Hey guys, I'm 16 years old and I've been getting into photography a little more lately.

Last night I shot a Sweet 16 and got some great shots but there's a problem I'm noticing. It seems a lot of the pictures, even if I select the center point focus, unwanted parts will be blurred or only the persons face will be in focus. It was especially bad when taking large group shots where make the 3 people in the middles faces would be in focus and the rest would be off.

I was using a D60 with a 50mm f1.8 AF-S. I think part of the problem was the very annoying 3-point auto focus on the D60.

So if someone can give me some tips to improve and fix the problem I'd really appreciate it!...Nick

Shooting with such a large aperture creates what we call a shallow depth of field. aka selective focus. If you were to stop down to f/5.6 or even f/8 you would find that a much larger area would be in focus.

or sice it is a party i recon it was indoor where shutter speed was set low so you introduced camera shake into your photos, to avoid that shoot with shutter speeds faster than 1/equviavlet focal lenght (with your 50 f1.8 it would be at least 1/60)

Alright thanks guys I'll try it out. I don't want to post any pictures of the party since there of a bunch of 16 year old girls but here are some i had with the same problem, notice how the face is in focus and the lower body/legs comes out of focus. It would be great if the whole dog was in focus and the background was blurred.
Exposure 1/60 sec, f/4.0 ISO 200
Exposure 1/80 sec, f/4.5 ISO 200

Sorry guys if these are stupid questions but like I said, I'm new to this and I'm starting to love it .

that is the general depth of field, close down the aperture to f8 or so and it should have more focus, but be careful because everything at the same distance will be in focus (rocks to the left of 1st dog)

also you could step back since the further away you are from the subject the bigger depth of field is, CORRECT ME if I'm wrong..